The Seven Sisters - Margaret Drabble

I never know what people expect when they ask me what a book I'm reading is about. Certainly, if I was reading The Abridged History of Asparagus, or something, I could just say "It's about asparagus", but most books are too complex to be reduced to being about something.

What is Margaret Drabble's novel The Seven Sisters about? Well, it's about feminism, particularly about women old enough for feminism to pass them by, and young enough to live to regret it; it's about living in the present when you feel you belong in the past; it's about being thrust into a strange world you can't fit into or understand; it's about loneliness, and isolation, and finding yourself unloved.

All of this sounds massively depressing, but it's the furthest thing from it. In fact, it's kind of magical. More on that later.

Our heroine is one Candida Wilton, living as a sort of hermit in a squalid London flat. Her husband, a handsome and charismatic headmaster of a school in the country, has left her for another woman, and her three adult daughters have all taken their father's side (or so Candida sees it). She hasn't been to university, and has never worked a real job - being a headmaster's wife was her full-time one - and so she is left, alone and unemployable with nothing to fill her life. She moves to London to escape the pity of her acquaintances, and starts over.

The first part of the novel is the diary of Candida's sojourn. I'm finding it difficult to describe it, because Candida really is a remarkably distinct narrator. Here's a small sample:

We were a happy couple when we were young. People probably thought I was lucky to catch him, though I too was pretty enough when I was a girl. I thought I was lucky, but that's because I was lacking in self-esteem. Also, in those days I loved him, and one tends to overestimate the value of a loved object.

That's the sort of detachment I mean. She's analytic and dispassionate, like a scientist, as she picks at the seams and deconstructs her past and her present without melodrama or emotional fanfare. She's also kind of bitchy. She's prickly and a little snide, for example constantly restating how fat her friend Sally is. When relaying how her youngest daughter, Martha, had found the body of her best friend when she was only twelve or thirteen, Candida remarks that after the initial shock, Martha must have enjoyed all the drama and the attention.

Yet, even though she's cold and not always all that nice, you like Candida - well, I did, anyway. There's something moving and poignant about her efforts to shape a new life for herself - she joins a Virgil class because she's charmed by its anachronistic nature, but also because she simply wants to make friends - the kind of friends, she writes, that she would not have met in her former life. She's vulnerable, and honest enough to admit it. Her quiet way of being gratified by small things, like a visit from her exotic friend Anaïs, is quite touching. She's also - and I hate this cliche as much as the next person, truly, but I think it fits here - a survivor. The anachronistic Virgil class ends, and is replaced by a thoroughly modern health club. Candida is offered a discounted membership, and she not only accepts it but actually uses it. She's plucky and in her muted, self-effacing way she's determined to make something of this life that could, so easily, have defeated her.

And make something of it she does. I won't reveal much, but Candida does manage to organize something quite exciting for herself and a group of rapidly-acquired new friends (and some old ones) and what follows is exhilarating. The Seven Sisters is about all the things I said it was, but I didn't mention perhaps the most important one - it's also about learning to love your life again, about having your lust for living and all sorts of other feelings stirred out of dormancy. I found many things to love here, but what I loved most was seeing happiness and passion reawaken in Candida.

I couldn't have loved this more, really; it's been a few months since I read it, and writing about it has reminded me just how much it resonated with me. Strongly recommended.